


Do We Deserve Better?

by Runnava



Series: Love & Survival In a World That Tolerates Neither [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Complex Interpersonal Dynamics, F/F, First Aid, Injury Recovery, Lexa Lives, Major Character Injury, Slow Burn, Survival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-08-28 12:37:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8446093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runnava/pseuds/Runnava
Summary: After three months on her own following the battle at Mount Weather, Clarke meets Lexa again, at the head of a new war.Events force them to return to Arkadia, where Lexa must deal with being kept from her own battles, and Clarke must deal with own feelings regarding both Lexa and returning to her people before she felt ready.Once there, problems only seem to multiply, until nearly everyone is working to combat one problem or another. (Fun fact, the sky people aren't idiots creating problems that don't need to happen!)Not S3 compliant, though some S3 plot points remain.





	1. A Summary of Prior Events

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The following is a summary of Part 1: More Than Just Survival. If you have not read it, I recommend that you do so. If you’re too lazy, or want/need a refresher, the following summarizes those events, though not in all its glorious detail (obviously).

**IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THAT YOU ACTUALLY READ PART 1. IT SHOULD GO WITHOUT SAYING THAT THIS SUMMARY CONTAINS SPOILERS.**

 

**Timescale:** Time is recorded in days since the battle of Mt. Weather. (AMW = After Mount Weather)

 

**Overview:**

Following the battle at Mount Weather, during which Lexa and the grounders broke their alliance with the _Skaikru_ , and Clarke and the _Skaikru_ went on to eliminate the _Maunon_ (mountain men), Clarke returned her people to their home (then known as Camp Jaha), and left them.

After having traveled several days away from Camp Jaha, Clarke was on the cusp of figuring out how to manage the basics of survival (food, water, shelter, warmth) when she was attacked by a panther. The fight ended with Clarke victorious, but injured; most notably her broken right arm and the gashes through her left calf making it difficult to walk. Blood loss and exhaustion caused Clarke to lose consciousness before her wounds could be completely tended to, and though she did her best the next day, she found herself suffering from a fever brought on by infection. As soon as Clarke realized the condition, she set out to try to find red seaweed to treat the infection. She found the seaweed, but it was too late, her fever spiking to the point of causing hallucinations prior to losing consciousness.

Fortunately, a young hunter, curious at the sounds of Clarke yelling at her own hallucination, found her and brought her to his village. Despite the language barrier, Clarke found herself welcomed in the unknown village and her wounds were treated. However, when the village chieftain made the mistake of uttering Lexa’s title, _heda_ , when sending a messenger to inform the leader of _Wanheda’s_ (Clarke’s) new location, Clarke abandoned the village for fear of having to face Lexa so soon.

Lexa rode into the village on the tail of Clarke’s departure, and was enraged to find that she’d missed the girl, immediately sending a guard to find her. And though he found her, Clarke refused to come quietly - or at all, only conceding so far as to let Lexa send someone to help her while she healed. And so the guard, **Zik** , was sent back to Clarke as soon as he delivered the message, stipulating that regular reports be made to her.

 **Zik:** ****(pronounced similarly to Zeke) (Original Character), male, approximately 28 years old, of an average build with lean muscle, dark-skinned. A [black] tattoo of unknown design and overall size extends from beneath the shirt/jacket region wrapping partway around his neck. He is typically clean-shaven, except when making a long trip in a rush. His hair is shaved away from the sides of his head, but what remains is teased into short, stiff braids, ending at the base of his neck. Personality-wise, he is excitable, energetic, fairly happy, but proper in regards to his dealings with his commander, and fiercely loyal in all manner of ways. He is known to have two sisters, and his mother is known to have died in one of the earlier assaults on Mount Weather.

Clarke and Zik became friends rather easily, Clarke constantly pushing him to teach her more about survival, and life on the ground in general, sometimes with half-hearted threats to send him back to Lexa. Zik was at first somewhat fearful, torn between the duty of keeping Clarke safe, his fear and awe of Clarke’s reputation as _Wanheda_ , and taking Clarke’s half-hearted threats seriously instead of realizing that she was setting up an argument to get her way. It didn’t take him too terribly long to realize that Clarke didn’t mean the majority of her threats.

Despite the hurdle of Clarke learning that Zik was keeping tabs on her for Lexa, their friendship continued to grow. Meanwhile, Lexa found herself summoned to TonDC with news that the _Skaikru_ had returned to Mount Weather. When she arrived, however, they had already left the mountain, and she busied herself aiding in TonDC’s reconstruction.

At the same time, Camp Jaha (shortly to be renamed to Arkadia) began to deal with the prospect of their food shortage, by training their jobless former prisoners, the hundred, to hunt and trap, while beginning construction on a greenhouse in an effort to maintain their food supply in the long term.

Abby, dealing as best she could with Clarke’s absence that whole time, and Raven, whom Abby had kept on a short leash in medical, headed back to Mount Weather to salvage what medical machinery the mountain had for their own use, in hopes of eventually being able to return Raven to full health (or at least better).

As close as she was, Lexa arrived less than half a day after at Mount Weather, and proceeded to demand to know why the sky people were there. Only to be interrupted by Abby sneezing on her. She spent the next few days running the mountain and looking after the sky people as they suffered from a nasty strain of influenza. Lexa left the mountain about as quickly as she arrived, though not without informing Abby that her daughter was alive and promising that she’d bring someone who had seen her to speak with Abby if the _Skaikru_ left the mountain in an expedient fashion.

On Zik’s next scheduled report, Lexa did exactly that and brought him with her to the Ark. Abby got the first news in months about Clarke, and far more than she thought she was bargaining for.

Between one of his reports and the next, Lexa observed  _Skaikru_ medicine in action as Abby operated on Raven, removing shrapnel suffered at the dam explosion, and the _Skaikru_ negotiated with Lexa. Or rather, Lexa dictated what conditions the _Skaikru_ must abide by to maintain peace, and offered a generous trade deal that granted the sky people more land of their own.

However, when Zik was next scheduled to report in on his and Clarke’s conditions, he didn’t show up. Lexa and Abby had one hell of a bonding session trying to wait patiently for him. But when the sun rose the next day, and it was clear that Zik wasn’t coming, Lexa led a search party out to their last known location. What she found there was a dead horse and a decimated camp site. A fight appeared to have occurred, with someone being dragged out of the camp site, and Azgeda arrows embedded in the horse.

Lexa headed to Polis, where she demanded the presence of the clan leaders, accusing Queen Nia of Azgeda of treason. Nia pretended as if nothing she’d done was wrong, and, when goaded, challenged Lexa. Ontari fought on Nia’s behalf, though she was no match for their commander (seriously, go read that fight - Chapter 23).

Meanwhile, following the trail of a mystery, Bellamy, Octavia, Raven and co. encountered Pike and other Farm Station survivors. Though they should have been glad to have found more of their people alive, the strong anti-grounder sentiment the Farm Station survivors held left everyone with a bad taste in their mouths. Farm Station (Pike) bullied their way into being allowed to stay at Mount Weather while more compartments of Alpha Station were brought down to expand living quarters to accommodate them in Arkadia.

Raven and crew had just barely extracted an additional piece of machinery from Mount Weather when a mysterious grounder streaked away from the mountain. Moments later, the mountain exploded, only a handful of Farm Station surviving.

Lexa declared war on Azgeda as the news reached her.

Anti-grounder sentiment grew stronger among the Farm Station people in the wake of the attack, but other Arkadians didn’t share their feelings. The army Lexa offered as protection, camped nearby, only scared them [Farm Station] further.

Having been restricted from handling weapons themselves, Pike and his crew looked for someone else to help provide them, absolutely certain that the army couldn’t possibly be there to protect them.

Having acquired weaponry, Pike and nearly all of his Farm Station fellows that remained made to leave Arkadia during the night, only to be stopped by Lincoln and Bellamy. Argument ensued as one side insisted that the grounders were a savage threat, and the other reasoned that not all grounders were even alike, much less pose a threat.

The argument was interrupted by a single arrow shot into camp, bearing a message. A message from Clarke, who, until that point, had been thought captured by Azgeda. And at Clarke’s word, the argument wound down quickly.

Clarke, it turned out, had left the warrior Lexa sent to care for her while he was away making a report, not having let on that her arm had finished healing. She then proceeded to survive quite well on her own (with the help of a friendly trading post).

That is, until Roan, banished prince of Azgeda, was sent to find her and drag her back to her mother. It was only then that Clarke learned that Zik was missing, of the nature of their campsite when it was found, and came to the conclusion that Zik had been taken captive by Azgeda. Instead of being returned to Arkadia, she demanded to be taken to the war front.

Their meeting was inevitable, but Clarke never expected it to happen practically the moment she arrived at the fighting. A combination of distraction - at seeing Clarke after all this time, where she most certainly should not be - and protective instincts caused Lexa to suffer injury. Two arrows struck her.

It is the 97th day after the battle of Mt. Weather, and that is where we currently are, on the front lines of a war against Azgeda, with Clarke and Lexa.

 

**Current whereabouts/last seen:**

Note : Characters can have been mentioned after their last sighting, this corresponds only to their actual appearances.

Additional Note: No [human] characters but those Farm Station in Mt. Weather when it blew have been killed. Yes, that is true even if we haven’t seen a character in a long time. Just look at the Chapter 14 - 24 Clarke absence. Yeah, the point was to make you think Azgeda captured her, but also: not dead (or captured).

 

Day 97, Azgeda War Front: Clarke, Lexa, Roan, Luna

Day 82, Grounder Camp Near Arkadia: Bellamy, Octavia, Indra

Day 82, Arkadian Prison Cell: Kane, Pike, Hannah, Brian, Nathan Miller

Day 81, Arkadian Grounds: Abby, Lincoln, Harper, Monroe

Day 79, Arkadia Interior: Sinclair

Day 75, Polis: Ontari, Titus, Nia

Day 75, Mt. Weather: Raven, Monty

Day 73, Trading Post: Niylah

Day 71, Arkadian Grounds: Sgt. Miller

Day 71, Arkadia Interior: Gina (implied)

Day 63, Arkadia Interior: Jasper

Day 54, Arkadia Interior: Kyle Wick

Day 53, Arkadian Grounds: Zik


	2. Travel Under Duress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lots of first aid, and relatively little travel. That's it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said 2-5 days, and I'm cutting it a bit close.

**CLARKE**

"You're not fine," Clarke corrected with mild shock lacing her voice. All of her abundance of rage had leached out of her when she'd noticed that Lexa was hurt. Her eyes raked over Lexa's form. The commander was tense, the fingernails on one hand entrenching themselves between the grooves of bark on the tree she clung to, while her right arm hung limp. Clarke could just make out the long shaft the arrow that protruded from Lexa's far side, just below the shoulder blade. It must have hit bone.

 _Why did she take that arrow? It would only have hit... me._ Clarke wondered without wanting to. Lexa couldn't care about her. Not enough to take an arrow for her.  _That would mean that all this time-_

The _slick_ of splitting flesh interrupted the revelation she wasn't ready to have, and her eyes refocused on the situation before her to find Lexa barely standing, fingers so tensed that the bark was breaking away beneath them as Lexa's knees started to fold. The point of a new arrow protruded from Lexa's left side, its center somewhere inside of the girl. And then the weak adherence of the bark to its tree gave entirely, and Lexa fell.

Clarke stumbled forward without a thought, bow forgotten on the ground behind her, and wrapped her arms around Lexa, arresting her fall as her own knees folded beneath her and met the ground below them. The elder woman's weight sunk into her as she held Lexa to her tightly, keeping her from landing on either of the arrows protruding from her body. She looked at the girl in her arms for just a moment before she decided what was never really a choice for her - to put her concerns aside for another time, and deal with the situation at hand, first.

"Roan!" Clarke found herself yelling, "Fucking help me, here!" She wasn't sure, yet, if Lexa was still conscious, but nonetheless, she issued a warning, much quieter than before, "Don't you fucking die before I have the chance to yell at you."  _Or before we find Zik,_ she continued in her mind as Roan finally reached her side.

A strong arm wrapped around both herself and Lexa, as Roan - from a crouch - dragged them both behind the cover of the nearest tree. He let go as soon as they were safe from further long-range attacks, and shifted around them to where Clarke could see his face. His eyes flitted down to the commander still cradled in Clarke's arms before coming back up to meet Clarke's briefly. He reached out for the arrow in Lexa's back.

"Don't!" Clarke said quickly. "Not unless you want to puncture her lung. I can't fix that."

Roan's eyes returned to hers before he asked, "What do you want me to do, Clarke?"

"Help me lay her down without hitting the arrows," Roan was already moving closer and pulling part of Lexa's weight off of her, "I need to take a look and see how bad it is."

Slowly, Lexa was peeled away from herself and laid on her side, just barely avoiding placing any stress on the still-embedded arrows.

"Clarke?" The voice came from beneath her as she leaned over the commander's body to look at the arrow protruding from her back. There was a hiss from the leader as Clarke's fingers gently probed the area around the object. "Just take it out. I have to fight."

So the commander was still awake, after all. Clarke strangled a desire to roll her eyes, "I'll be the judge of that." She pulled a knife from the sheath at her thigh and sliced part of the commander's shirt away from the site of the wound. "I can get this one out, but not without a clean knife. And I think it broke your rib." Clarke leaned back and shuffled backward on her knees so that she could better see the arrow that had gone through. Cautious fingers met with the bottom of Lexa's rib cage on her left side, but became firmer when it didn't earn the same kind of hiss the shoulder had. She silently counted out the finger widths between the bottom rib and the shaft of the arrow as she shifted down to it.  _One and a half finger widths - not far enough._ She eyed the distance of the puncture from the spine.  _Not far enough._ "There's a small chance the arrow didn't hit her kidney, but I'm not exactly willing to take that risk." Clarke looked up toward Roan. "In fact, I'm pretty sure it's a solid hit to the kidney unless hers are abnormally small." She looked back down at Lexa momentarily, considering her options. "I can't take that arrow out. If I do, there's a good chance she'll bleed out."

A growl came from below her, "Then I'll die at war, as it should be."

Clarke just barely held back the snarl that formed in her expression from being vocalized, but roughly grabbed Lexa by the cheek and turned her head toward her, "You. Are  _not_ going to be dying out here. Certainly not  _yet._ " Lexa's dark eyes met with hers, expression betraying nothing. "Zik?" she paused a moment, waiting for some kind of acknowledgement that never came, but continued anyway, "He... he hasn't been with me. If he was taken - if that bitch queen has him - I'm getting him back. But I need you and your damn army to get close enough." She waited for a slight nod of understanding before she dropped Lexa's face, and turned back toward Roan. "We have to get her back to Arkadia. I'm no surgeon, but my mom - she can fix this."

"Okay," came Roan's gruff agreement, "What's the plan, then? It isn't close."

Clarke leaned back over Lexa, grasped the shaft of the arrow lodged just below her shoulder, earning another strangled hiss from the commander, and broke off the excess length of the shaft with her other hand. "Break the other side of the other one. Carefully," she said before turning her attention to the side of the arrow closest herself and broke it in the same fashion. "That camp we found on the way here? Do you think you can get her there without disturbing the wounds?"

Roan gave the commander a once over before nodding slowly, "I can manage it."

"Good." Clarke pushed to her feet, "Take her there, ignore any protests, and clear out a spot next to a fire. Heat up a knife if you've got one sharp enough." Clarke grabbed her bow from where it lay forgotten all that time, then turned to walk away into the woods.

"Clarke? Where are you going?"

"I have to get my bag. I'll meet you there."

She didn't wait for any further questions or complaints, and ignored the feeling of eyes on her as she slipped back into the darkness between the trees. They'd dropped their packs in favor of not entering battle encumbered, but finding those supplies in the dark might not be the easiest of tasks.

By the time she made it back to the warriors' resting encampment, Roan had Lexa laid on her side again, with her back to the nearest fire, while he squatted next to her, one hand gently keeping the girl from rolling over onto either end of the arrow shaft that stuck through her left side. The rest of the camp seemed to be cleared out, at least visibly, except for the large-haired authoritarian from earlier in the night, kneeling next to Lexa's head, one hand held gently in her own. Clarke only heard the tail end of what she was saying as she approached, "-every time, Lexa. Something must change-" The woman's hair shone red in the firelight, but Clarke wasn't sure if that was its color or the lighting. Regardless, the woman's eyes came to rest purposefully on her as she finished whatever she'd been saying with, "-and you know what."

Clarke felt Lexa's tired nod as she knelt next to the girl, instead turning her attention to Roan. "Is the knife ready?"

"Yeah. You?" Roan's free hand fingered on the hilt of a knife whose blade was surrounded by flame.

"Not yet." She pulled her own knife from its sheath again, "I need to cut away more of the shirt." She moved Lexa's hair out of the way, eyes catching on a tattoo in the shape of an infinity symbol on the commander's neck, illuminated by the flickering firelight, as she did so. Clarke vaguely registered it as aesthetically pleasing despite the faded scar splitting it apart. She quickly turned her attention back to the shirt and cut a larger hole in the sodden fabric, anything but the white it had been at one point, before tearing the opening further, exposing more of the wounded area; but she slowly came to a halt in confusion at the sight of what it revealed. Clarke swiped a finger through what appeared to be a very dirty trail of blood coming from the puncture, and stared at it curiously on the tip of her finger in the firelight.

Her eyes were narrowed and brows scrunched with confusion, just thinking _'Is there a poison that turns blood black?'_  when the girl with the fiery mane beside her spoke up, question directed toward Lexa, "She doesn't know, does she?"

The commander's eyes flickered down to her, catching her eyeing the dark substance, before she answered simply, "No."

"Do the sky people know so little about our culture?"

There was a grunt from the commander, as she re-positioned her head, before she offered a response as Clarke turned her attention to their conversation, "It didn't seem important. I do not think the  _Skaikru_ can be  _natblidas_."

"Still, Lexa-"

"What's a  _natblida_?" Clarke interrupted, feeling it pertained, perhaps, to the odd blood slowly leaking from her patient, and may, therefore, be important. Frustration mounted rapidly in the terse silence as her question remained unanswered, "Quickly! Wasting time doesn't help any of us!"

"The commander is a  _natblida_ , a night blood, always," Roan finally answered for her. "They have black blood. The spirit of the commander is said to be incompatible with those who don't have it."

"Okay..." Clarke tried to think through possible reasons for black blood, but came up with nothing, "Do any of you know if any medicines work differently on them? Better? Worse? Not at all? Sick more or less? Heal faster? Anything different at all?"

The stranger and Lexa seemed to share a look before Lexa mumbled, "If anything, we are sick less often." Lexa tilted her head toward her own torso to look at Clarke once again, "Do what you have to, Clarke. Our healers do not treat us any differently, so I see no reason you should."

Clarke couldn't help but to pause, feeling the pressure of the situation. Not knowing was always a risk in medicine. "Fine. Tell me if anything feels wrong. You two-" She gave both Roan and the stranger quick looks, "Keep an eye on her, tell me if anything changes if she can't, or _won't_." They gave mute nods. "Roan, give me the knife."

It was handed to her, blade still red-hot and hissing in the cold night air. Clarke bent herself over Lexa, giving a short warning, "Hold her still," before making the first cut. To her credit, Lexa only tensed slightly as Clarke made careful incisions. However, when Clarke had widened the wound enough to remove the arrowhead without tearing the skin, and gripped and pulled at what remained of the arrow shaft, Lexa jerked forward. A sharp cry came from the girl, and Clarke glared at Roan instantly, "I said to hold her still!"

Clarke pulled her attention away from both Roan and the wound she had been working on, arrow tip still in hand, to assess the worsening of the wounds on either side of the other arrow. Where before the wound had been tight around the arrow shaft on both sides, but for the neat slit where the head of the arrow had passed, it was now widened slightly, and the flow of blood from both sides of her increased slightly, slowly saturating Lexa's already ruined shirt. "Shit. You-" She pointed at the woman she didn't know, "Find me some clean rags, quickly."

She almost pressed one hand to the wound on Lexa's front, to apply pressure, before thinking better of it. With the arrow shaft still in there, manual pressure might further aggravate it. Instead, Clarke her attention back to the other wound, and the arrow still in hand. She held it out toward the fire, examining the point, "It looks like the arrowhead is still intact. Roan, can you tell if there's any poison?" She handed it off to him, and he shuffled forward to brace the commander's weight against the front of his thighs while bringing the point to his mouth and licking timidly. "And throw the knife back in the fire."

He took the knife from her and leaned back without compromising his hold on Lexa to stick it into the flames while saying, "No poison. We got lucky."

Clarke pulled a canteen from her pack and flushed the open wound while responding drolly, "I'll take luck." She dropped the canteen and held her hand out toward Roan, "Knife?"

He passed it back to her, gleaming red-hot again and once more she instructed that Lexa be held still. Then she brought the hot blade to the split flesh, the sizzle loud, and the smell acrid. Surprisingly, Lexa didn't so much as twitch in response to the cauterization.

The stranger returned to them with a handful of rags and dropped them on Clarke, attention consumed instead with Lexa, carefully pulling her head up and slotting her fingers into the meeting between neck and jaw for a pulse. "She lost consciousness, but she's still here."

Clarke felt a breath rush from her. In relief she was loath to admit to. She checked for a pulse herself, just to make sure. "I think it's the pain. Unless she's bleeding out internally." She grabbed at the hem of Lexa's shirt and slowly tugged upward against the hold of sweat and blood, but the shadows cast by Lexa's own body and her unwillingness to disturb the second arrow prevented her from getting a good look at anything. "I can't be sure." Clarke gently pried Lexa's right eye open and tried to get a look at her pupil. "Roan, hand me a brand from the fire." When he did, Lexa's pupil shifted and contracted properly, and she let out another sigh of relief as she passed the torch back to Roan. "I'm not sure, exactly, but I think she's okay for now. We need to get her to my mom."

Digging quickly through her med-kit, Clarke pulled out a vial and passed it to their stranger, "Here. Get her to drink that." A coagulant might help. It would slow the bleeding at any rate. "Who are you, by the way?" She returned to searching her kit.

There was a long moment of silence before the girl said, "Mel." And there was more quiet before anything further was given. "Leader of the  _Floukru_."

Clarke finally found a small jar of salve and handed it to Roan, "On the wound there." She pointed briefly at the newly cauterized wound, then looked toward 'Mel.' "Thanks for helping, I guess. Do you have any horses we can borrow? Or a cart? Maybe some supplies?"

Lexa started choking on the medicine being poured into her mouth and Clarke almost reached out to smooth her fingers across her throat muscles to force the fluid down, only to be beaten to it by Mel. "It's already being taken care of. They should be back soon."

Clarke took her word for it and started sorting out the lengths of cloth draped over her before slowly and carefully bandaging the still-embedded arrow shaft - and the wounds it had made - as best she could, while Roan covered the other wound. "Good. Thanks." She kept talking in an attempt to ignore any sense of awkwardness she felt. "Who's in charge while she's gone?" She gestured toward Lexa's unconscious form between them all.

"Someone else," was the non-answer.

Clarke's eyes slid sideways, narrowing as they did, until a mild glare was leveled at the  _Floukru_ leader, who was either being obtuse or rejecting the responsibility herself. "Well, whoever-"

The sound of a creaking wooden cart interrupted her and she glanced over her own shoulder, away from the light of the fires, to see a horse-drawn cart arrive with two warriors. "Roan, take her to the cart. Try not to hit any of the wounds, and tie her down so she can't roll over onto anything."

Then Clarke pushed to her feet as Roan moved away with Lexa in his arms, so that she was standing face-to-face with the  _Floukru_ leader, who remained, "Whoever is in charge, you tell them that  _Wanheda_ has a friend out there, and that she wants him back alive and well." She narrowed her eyes and shifted somewhat further into Mel's face. "They should know what happens to people who stand between  _Wanheda_ and her friends, but if they don't -  _Wanheda_ is coming back here, and if my friend is in danger, hurt, or  _dead_ , no one on that battlefield will be safe from me." Her voice was harsh, stern, with a hint of a growl and an odd mix of third and first-person, like she wasn't sure if she was  _Wanheda_ or not. But, of course, she wasn't sure.  _Wanheda_ was something - a persona, or a threat - but she wasn't sure it was  _her._

But the leader before her just smirked softly in the face of her threats, "I'll make sure they know. You'll make sure she survives, Clarke."

Clarke's eyes narrowed, wondering how the girl knew her name until she realized Lexa had said it earlier. "She'll come back to this war alive."

The smirk never faltered, "It's not a request, Clarke." And before Clarke could argue, the leader had turned on her heel and stalked into the dark woods, leaving Clarke to deal with Lexa, Roan, and a cart.

And a couple new additions to their party. Guards for Lexa, apparently. And apparently there was no fighting them on it.

She dropped her pack into the cart well away from Lexa's head, though the girl groaned as its weight met the wooden structure. Clarke's eyes shifted over to examine the girl, only to find Lexa's eyes open again.

"You're awake," came out as something between question and statement. Lexa gave no response, nor any indication she had heard. Roan was pulling tight the third of a series of ropes that held the commander's body to the cart. Clarke stepped sideways and leaned over the edge of the cart near Lexa's head, "You remember who you are? And what happened? What's happening?" It was a lazy attempt to gauge the woman's mental faculties and alertness.

"Clarke," it wasn't an answer. At best, it was proof that Lexa knew who  _she_ was. "I can't travel like this... I am the commander. My people cannot see me like this."

Rolling her eyes, Clarke accepted that as proof enough that Lexa was alright, for now. She glanced around and picked up an old, empty burlap sack from the floor of the cart, slipping her blade from its sheath for the third time that night, "You don't really have a choice. I'm not taking that other arrow out of you," Clarke started slicing up the seam of the bag, "because it's the only thing keeping you from bleeding out. And I don't mean 'bleeding to the outside of your body', I mean 'blood leaving your circulatory system in such quantities that it poses a risk to your life'." She pulled some loose strings from the edge of the sack and then flipped it around to undo the other side, "Because even if I pull it out and sew up or cauterize the wounds, you'll just bleed into your abdomen. And that arrow may be the only thing stopping that from happening right now, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to be walking around with it in there. You move slightly wrong, and we'll have the same problem." She leaned back over the edge of the cart at Lexa's head. "So stay still. But here-" she tossed the burlap over Lexa's form, "-pretend you're not the commander. You're a sack of potatoes."

She heard a grumble of "not  _Skaikru_ potatoes, they're awful" and almost stopped to check the commander's alertness again, but instead walked around the cart to Roan.

"Done?"

"Yeah."

"Let's get going, then. The longer it takes to get to my mother, the worse this is."

_I don't want to go home. But for Lexa - for **Zik** , I have to. Lexa is my best shot at getting to him in time._

* * *

**CLARKE**

They didn't stop for a break until lunch the next day. And aside from casual observations between herself and Roan, and whatever conversation the two guards were having between themselves, it was a quiet morning.

Roan dragged one of the guards off with him to find them all some food when they stopped. Clarke was almost certain it was to force her to talk to anyone other than him. Or maybe he was interested in getting to know the guard.

Either way, when only the three of them remained, Lexa imperiously demanded to be released from the cart while they were stopped. Clarke had had her mouth open, ready to deny the request, but the other obedient guard was already at Lexa's side, undoing the ropes.

It wasn't a good idea to let Lexa move around, injured and with the arrow still inside her, but - Clarke rationalized - Lexa was the one hurt and at risk, here. She was conscious enough to be attempting to function as normal, yet hadn't tried to order the lot of them back to the war, or to take  _her_ back to it. And she hadn't shown any worrisome symptoms, yet.

Most of all, Clarke didn't want to talk to her if she didn't have to.

As one guard stoked cooking meat over the flames and other tried to pass a meat-laden bone to Lexa, however, she finally interfered. "No," her hand coming up to physically block the passing meal, snatching it out of the warrior's hand and tossing it to Roan, who bit into it without pause. "She -  _you_ -" she pointed at Lexa, "don't get any food until I'm sure that arrow didn't puncture your colon."

Clarke stomped around to the other side of the fire, and took a seat huffily, but still, she could hear Lexa say, "As she says." At least she wouldn't have to argue the point.

Glaring across the fire between them, Clarke said, "You can have water. That's it."

Lexa gave a mute nod and held a hand out wordlessly to the same guard, who eventually produced a water skin.

The meal began in a stony kind of silence, but before long, Roan was sharing small talk with the two guards. Clarke tried to pay attention to the conversation, and entirely ignored it when Lexa got up and walked off into the trees.

She could guess what for, and she wasn't about to stop her from doing it.

Clarke picked at her food as the minutes wore on, no longer trying to keep her mind on the conversation before her, but instead thinking about sleep, and the desire to just lean back against a tree and close her eyes.

"Clarke?" The voice came from the treeline, questioning and uncertain, like Lexa was unsure if Clarke would listen to her.

"What?" Her eyes were still focused on the meal in hand, and even as she spoke, she pried what little meat was left from the bone with her fingers before depositing it into her mouth.

There was an uncertain pause before Lexa spoke again, not answering the simple question. "Can you come here?" the words were tentative and quiet. Almost scared, she'd think, if they came from anyone else.

Clarke finally looked over at Lexa, eyes narrowed in suspicion, until she noticed just how heavily Lexa leaned into the tree beside her, and how heavy her breathing was, and how, despite the carefully controlled calm of her face, fear could be seen in Lexa's eyes. She let the empty bone fall from her grasp as she stood and walked over to Lexa, stopping face-to-face a foot apart, and repeated herself, "What is it?"

Lexa swallowed quite visibly, her eyes scanning their surroundings, as if there was some concern for being overhead before she said, quieter still, voice little more than a whisper, "Blood. When I... relieved myself."

She felt her eyes widen, despite herself, in surprise. At Lexa's bluntness, or honesty, or demeanor, but not at the news itself. "Okay. How red- how black?" She corrected herself hastily, while placing her hand on Lexa's bicep, slowly guiding her in the direction of the cart. "How much blood?" She gently pushed Lexa toward the cart, "Lay down. Lift up your shirt."

Lexa sat and untied the bandages around her abdomen, before shifting carefully onto her side and sliding more fully onto the cart. "Grey-ish," she grunted as she carefully pulled the front of her shirt away from herself and up over what remained of the arrow embedded in her. "I do not know how much blood that would be." The front of her shirt unpinned, Lexa reached for the back, a hiss escaping as her attempt nudged the captured projectile.

Clarke silently bat Lexa's hand away and slit the shirt open with her knife. An involuntary gasp escaped her at the sight.

"What?" Lexa queried, trying to crane her head to see her own backside.

Swallowing down her emotions carefully, Clarke answered truthfully, "Just a lot of bruising." 'Black-and-blue' was apparently a thing for red-blooded individuals. 'Black-and-blacker' was more accurate for Lexa, the skin around the puncture nearly as black as her blood itself, and slowly fading into shades of grey as it spread down to the top of her hip and over to the ridge of her spine. Predictably, the bruising was worst at Lexa's left side, where gravity had had ample opportunity to pool the escaped liquid as Lexa lay. Clarke paused in conversation as she debated just how blunt to be. "You're bleeding internally. I expected the blood in your urine. It confirms that the arrow hit your kidney. But you really shouldn't be moving around. Has it been hurting, even when you're careful?"

She waited for a response, but guilty silence was all she received.

"You can't just ignore this pain like you did with your arm," she admonished, peeling away Lexa's shirt and taking a closer look at the puncture wound itself, before shifting around her to look at the other. "Between the pain and the blood loss - especially if you move wrong and the bleeding gets worse - you'll go into shock."

"What is shock?" Lexa's eyes were wide an betrayed concern and curiosity simultaneously as the girl looked up at her.

Clarke let out a sigh, "Close your eyes. Don't open them until I say so." She moved her fingers to the pulse point just beneath Lexa's jaw, silently counting out the beats as she replied, "It's when your body, specifically your organs, don't get enough blood. And therefore, don't get enough oxygen, and stop functioning like they're supposed to."

"What then?"

She grabbed Lexa by the chin and angled her face toward herself, "Look straight forward, and keep looking straight when you open your eyes." The midday sun should be enough get get a pupillary response. "Okay, open them." She ignored the sense of awkwardness as she stared into Lexa's eyes, but it didn't last long, their pupils contracted swiftly, hiding from the sun, and she dropped Lexa's chin and moved away. "And then, you probably die. There's not a lot that I can do out here to treat shock, and without being able to restore blood flow to your organs... that's it. That's what will happen." She stepped down from the cart and turned back to face Lexa, who seemed as unconcerned as always about the prospect of her death. "Your heart rate is already a bit elevated." There was a pause where they merely stared at each other, and then, "So lay down and stay down, no matter how much you don't like it."

Clarke turned away, but only took one step back toward the rest of the group before she heard Lexa, "Clarke?"

She glanced over her shoulder at the prone girl, shaking her head slightly, "No. That's it. All I can do is get you to my mother, and all you can do is follow orders and avoid making it worse."

\- - -

**CLARKE**

It wasn't until the light was riding down the western horizon that they stopped again, despite the lack of sleep all round.

Throughout the afternoon, Lexa had become paler. It had taken a lot of effort on Clarke's part to resist the temptation to check on her again. A lot of effort and a lot of rationalized fear. To some degree, her emotions were getting the better of her, and they felt infinitely more pronounced in Lexa's presence. So she held off on giving them the opportunity to rush to the forefront again. The good  _or_ the bad emotions.

If she had had any say in it, Clarke wouldn't have been feeling anything at all.

When the group stopped for the night, Clarke knew she could no longer rationalize not checking on Lexa. One look at her was enough to instill worry, skin pale and shimmering slightly in the fading light.

With a heavy sigh as she gathered her courage, she climbed into the cart beside Lexa. Lexa's skin felt cooler than usual, too cold, really, as her fingers brushed the girl's neck as she reached for her pulse. The skin was chill, and slimy with sweat that couldn't have possibly still been from battle. Clarke swallowed unconsciously. It was a bad sign.

The pulse was still elevated, but not noticeably any worse than it had been earlier in the day.

Lexa's eyes followed her every move as Clarke followed her suspicions and moved her hand up to rest the back of it against Lexa's forehead; which, by contrast, felt warm.

The first signs of shock were impossible to ignore.

She had Roan hand her a torch from the fire one of the guards had just brought to life to check Lexa's pupil response. Thankfully, it was still normal.

With the light of the fire still held in hand, Clarke shifted around to check Lexa's various wounds, peeling the bandages away from the one on her shoulder, looking for signs of infection. Or anything else that would yield a diagnosis other than shock. But the wounds were clean, and Clarke sighed heavily as she passed the torch back to Roan.

"Put that away and help me turn her around," Clarke started picking at the knots of a rope that held the commander to the cart. "So her feet are elevated by the tilt of the cart." Then she raised her voice to address everyone, including the pair of guards that may have been more useful at the war than here, "We're not stopping for the night. So cook whatever you can quick, and eat while we move, because the commander isstarting to show signs of shock, and we don't have time to take a break."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> {Day 97 - 98}
> 
> Note: 'Mel' is Luna, but neither Clarke nor Roan know her as Luna. Basically, she doesn't trust and/or doesn't want either Clarke or Roan spreading her real name.


	3. Amateur Ambush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke does what she can to keep Lexa stable long enough to reach Arkadia. A roadblock stands between them and their destination, and they encounter someone who hasn't been seen in a long while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, aside from the outline (which often gets done months before the actual writing), most of this was written today.
> 
> I'm just not feeling motivated to write, and things like going home for the holidays gets in the way.
> 
> That said, may take me a while, but I never have any intention of leaving this unfinished. I have 18 pages of hand-written outline that still needs to be converted to chapters (18 pages is probably about 12 chapters, but it depends on how I break it up). [Note: The outline isn't done for the whole story. I've just been putting off outlining the next segment.] The thoughts and story are all there, it's just a matter of getting the motivation to turn idea to prose.
> 
> Also, if this chapter feels short, it's because there was supposed to be another segment (which is part of the reason for the hold-up), that ultimately got rearranged to another place in the story.

**CLARKE**

The night had been long, especially with none of their party (save Lexa) having slept in a day. They weren't stupid; they knew they couldn't continue that way, no matter how desperately they needed to reach Arkadia as quickly as possible. They'd taken turns throughout the night sleeping in the cart, just a few hours each. Clarke could feel the general grumpiness of her mood, despite the lack of any interaction that would showcase it to others. Waking from her own nap had felt like crawling out of the grave. She'd somehow felt more tired than before she'd gotten any sleep. That feeling had faded over time, as she was forced to walk and the effort of perpetual forward motion kept her awake and at least marginally alert.

Roan was sleeping in the cart as the sun made another appearance, propped up by the walls of the cart where they formed a corner, head lolling back over one of the sides, moving freely against gravity as the cart lumbered over divots and rocks in the road. She was surprised that he could sleep in such a position.

Lexa still lay strapped to the cart, backwards, either asleep or unconscious. The emergent sunlight made it possible to notice the worrying fact that the commander was now visibly paler than the night before.

Clarke gave the horizon a glance as she worked to ignore the worry twisting inside of her, before taking a deep breath and clambering up into the cart beside Lexa.

In addition to her sickly pallor, the sheen of sweat - that should have been nearly impossible to maintain throughout the chilly night without physical exertion - maintained its place coating Lexa's skin, and slightly dampened her hair. Fingers slotted into place on Lexa's neck, just beneath the jaw, almost like a habit. The gentle tap of a pulse beating back against her fingertips, shallow and rapid.

The frown she felt slipped into place without any resistance, as Lexa mumbled something incoherent. The skin beneath her fingers was warm enough that she didn't have to check any more thoroughly to know Lexa still had a fever.

Clarke crawled across the bed of the cart to where her pack still lay in a corner. Digging inside of it, she found her kit of medicines and extracted it, flipping the case open in the process. She wriggled free a small vial of translucent blue liquid that may well have once saved her own life. She turned back toward Lexa, uncapping the vial with one hand as she tilted Lexa's head upward and gently pried her mouth open with the other. Clarke was only vaguely cognizant of the guards speaking and the slow of the cart as she upended the meager contents of the vial into Lexa's mouth and coaxed their acceptance through Lexa's esophagus.

Lexa coughed at the intrusive liquid, but quickly reverted to a state of minimal responsiveness, another incoherent mutter falling from her lips.

Clarke made quick work of peeling off old bandages and checking wounds before replacing them with fresh ones. As her hands functioned on autopilot, she finally glanced at the road behind her to see why they had stopped. A figure lay in the road, one of the guards walking toward them. Clarke shrugged internally and turned her attention back to Lexa. Another patient to tend, at worst.

Focus back on Lexa, she turned the girl's face toward her again and peeled an eyelid open. She could practically feel her heart sink into her stomach at the sluggish response of the pupil, concern gripping her fully right before she was startled by a gruff yelp from the road behind her.

She quickly analyzed the situation as she leapt over the side of the cart.

The larger of the two guards - Laren, as she'd learned when organizing sleeping shifts - had the slim form, that had laid still on the road before, in a headlock, their feet dangling a few inches off the ground, kicking and flailing against the hold. And protruding from Laren's calf was a blade.

Her eyes darted to the forest around them, noting the still and utter silence. If this was what it seemed - an ambush - it was the worst attempt she could even imagine.

The second guard, Wren, circled around the pair to face the failed attacker as Laren said, "Stop your struggle, thief! Search him for other weapons so we can end his fight, Wren."

Skillfully avoiding the flailing limbs, Wren ducked in close and started fishing through the boy's pockets while patting him down for weapons as Clarke continued toward the scene.

"Lots of robbery on this road,  _thief_ ," Clarke could just overhear Laren murmur threateningly into the ear of his still-struggling captive.

Suddenly, with a look of shock clear on her face, Wren stood up straight, a small object in hand the focus of her surprise. A whisper, "The sacred symbol..." and then louder, she demanded, "Where did you steal this from, thief?!" The tiny thing was thrust before the boy's face.

The answering voice was just a bit too familiar, but somehow felt so out of place here, "The one thing I  _didn't_ steal, asshole." They still jerked against Laren's firm hold.

A gasping splutter came from the boy as Laren flexed his bicep around the boy's neck, demanding an answer, "Where did you get it?"

Clarke finally rounded the pair, the not-so-mysterious captive coming fully into view, finally. The voice should have been a dead giveaway, but she still felt shock as she uttered, "Murphy?"

Murphy went limp, surprise coloring his own features, "Clarke?" His struggle against the hold came to a stop entirely, "What are you doing with these people?"

Shaking her head slightly as the series of events that led her here flashed through her mind, she merely said, "It's a long story." She refocused her attention on Laren, "What's the problem here?"

"He thieves on  _Heda's_ road. You know the punishment for that."

Clarke let a minute nod indicate that she did, in fact, know the punishment.

Wren stepped up beside her, holding out a small hexagonal object with an infinity etched into it, "And he had this on him. It is our sacred symbol." Frowning, Clarke recalled the infinity on Lexa's neck. Perhaps it was there  _because_ it was sacred to them. "He should not have this.  _Heda_ must know where it came from."

She nodded again, "Okay." Then turned toward Murphy, "Have you been back to Arkadia?"

"What the fuck is Arkadia?" His confusion would have been evident by his words alone, even if his face didn't contort into the signature disdainful grimace that accompanied any of Murphy's confusion.

Clarke sighed, "They renamed Camp Jaha." She then returned her focus to Lexa's guards, who would like to have been chopping a hand or two off of Murphy at that moment, "He hasn't been back, so he doesn't know about the treaty, or the laws and punishments that come with it."

Laren bristled, indignant, "This cannot go unpunished!"

"I'm not saying it should, or will." Clarke chanced a glance in the direction of the cart that held their ailing commander, "Look, the commander is out of it. We still need to get her to Arkadia. I say we drag Murphy with us, and when the commander is able, she can decide his punishment."

"What if-?"

"She won't," she quickly interrupted. She couldn't let Lexa die. Not like this, anyways. "And if I'm wrong, if she does, then I'll let you punish him how you want."

"And the symbol?" Wren asked.

"Confiscate it. Show  _heda_ when she's better."

Murphy struggled weakly against the arm around his neck, "You can have the fucking chip, but I didn't agree to be drug around!"

"No, you didn't." She turned away from him, "But it wasn't a choice." A smirking Roan leaned against one side of the cart, clearly amused by the entire exchange, "Roan, make sure mister Murphy makes it back to Arkadia with us."

Roan's bemusement dropped off his face as his eyes rolled. Still, he came over and roughly grabbed Murphy by the scruff of his neck as Laren released his hold on the boy. "Fine."

* * *

**CLARKE**

By mid-afternoon the following day, they were finally in the "home stretch". Even if Arkadia didn't feel like home.

Nevertheless, it  _was_ where they needed to be. Sooner, if space and time would deign to distort that way and allow it.

Lexa had vomited once, not long ago. Not having eaten in three days, it was pure liquid and stomach acid, and no less worrisome because of it.

Clarke had climbed into the cart when it happened, pulled her uninjured arm up to support her head, keeping her in place on her side so that her airway wouldn't become blocked. She hadn't left the commander's side since, fingers finding a home on Lexa's pulse, the faint heart beat and the feel of her continued breathing the only reassurance to be had.

Her concern no longer resided solely beneath the surface. She could feel the clench of her furrowed brow, and she couldn't seem to focus her gaze anywhere but on Lexa.  _It's just concern for her health_ , she told herself. Worry about the possibility of Lexa vomiting again; both as a sign of things going poorly, and for the abdominal muscle contractions aggravating the wound there.  _It's just normal worry about a patient. It's normal to worry._ She may not have entirely believed herself. Nothing about the situation felt normal.

As they approached the treeline to the clearing around Arkadia, Clarke tore her gaze away from Lexa, looking forward toward the camp that seemed to loom large and ominously before her, stomach clenching in involuntary knots at her imminent return. She quickly debated whether or not to send someone ahead to explain their arrival. She knew the general population was okay with the grounders, or at least with Lexa, but she also knew that her people could be unpredictable and fearful.

Ultimately, Lexa's condition won her internal argument. The quicker a response from those at the gate, the quicker they could get Lexa to medical. And sending someone ahead was only logical if she wanted swift action.

Sighing, she glanced over the edge of the cart toward the pair of guards, sizing them up for how much of a threat they may be perceived as. "Wren," she chose the less threatening, slight female. She knew the woman was no less of a threat than Laren, but her people knew nothing. "Go ahead of us to the gate. Tell them the commander will be arriving shortly, needing medical attention, to get the gates open, grab some people who can help carry her, and tell them to prep medical." There was a momentary pause, and Clarke wondered if she would need to repeat her orders, "Got that?"

Wren just picked up speed, shifting into a jog as she pulled out ahead of them, covering the ground between them and the treeline in a flash.

The cart trundled out of the cover of the forest into the clearing around Arkadia a scant few minutes later, the first time Clarke had been so near camp in the daylight in quite some time. Under the twist of guilt and mild fear, she felt a sense of relief at the sight of the gates already widening to accept them.

Clarke jumped from the cart as they drew near, barely acknowledging her own hesitation at removing her fingers from Lexa's pulse.  _I just want her to survive, right? To help me find Zik, to fix things..._

She shoved the thoughts aside. No matter the reason, it was necessary to let her fingers leave their place at Lexa's pulse, if she was going to hand her over to her mother in medical.

Her hands found the knot of one of the several ropes that held Lexa to the cart, that had kept her from rolling onto her wounds. She began prying the knot loose, calling loudly, "I need a couple people to carry her to-"

"Clarke?"

A sub-audible growl rumbled through her. She didn't have time to explain  _herself_ , she had to explain Lexa's condition and get her to medical. Clarke looked up briefly, eyes catching the speaker, vaguely recognizing Nathan Miller's father, a Sergeant in the guard. "Not now," was all she gave him, hoping he would come to realize the situation before them bore more importance than she did, as she returned to untying the ropes. "I need a couple people to carry her to medical. She's got an arrow shaft in her abdomen, so be careful!" One bind came undone and she moved to the next. "Someone run ahead and tell my mom she's got a new patient. Kidney puncture, internal bleeding, shock."

No one moved for a long moment as Clarke pulled the ties free from another rope before looking up at the gathering crowd. "Go!" she yelled. And suddenly, more than one person was running off toward the Ark, and a few others cautiously moved closer to Clarke. The final ropes were undone and a pair of guards grabbed her by the shoulders and ankles to haul her off toward the Ark. Clarke grimaced silently, remembering Lexa's broken rib (or ribs), but the girl was so out of it that she made no complaint at the way she was held. So Clarke let it go for then, and turned to the others with her.

She addressed Laren and Wren first, "Take the cart in and let the horse have a break. I'm sure someone-" she gave a pointed look at the still-present crowd, which began to slowly disperse under her glare, "-can help you find food and water for it, and somewhere to keep it. After that, if you want, you can go to the commander, or get food, or whatever you want. Just ask someone. Hopefully they'll take you wherever you want."

Clarke turned toward Roan and Murphy, the younger boy dwarfed by Roan's height, seeming to sink into the shadow he cast, almost as if to hide, sheepishly accepting the large hand that was again holding him by the scruff. "Drag him inside. I really don't care what you do, but he-" she pointed at Murphy, "-isn't allowed to leave."

She waited for them to walk away, before turning back toward Sergeant Miller and the few guards that remained from the initial crowd around the gate. There was an awkward silence as Clarke tried to decide how to politely jump into her demands, "I know it's been a while since I've been here... but I needed the time away," she offered lamely, stubbornly keeping her eyes fixed on his, despite the feeling that no one would - or  _could_ \- understand how she felt. How she  _feels_. Like it's all too soon, and too much, and the distance was the only thing making it  _easy_ to hold herself together. "But I need you to do me a favor. Murphy-" She gestured over her shoulder in the vague direction he and Roan had wandered off, "-is not allowed to leave camp unless the commander, myself, or the chancellor,  _after_ they've spoken to the commander, say so, okay?" She wasn't sure how to interpret the blank expression presented to her, and so she tried to explain why in as little detail as possible. "It's kind of a diplomatic issue we stumbled upon on the way here. Could you just please let all the guards know it would be a bad idea if Murphy left camp without permission?"

A small measure of understanding slipping into his expression, the sergeant responded, "Yeah, Clarke, I can do that." And then there was a pause, ever so slight, before the inevitable began, "Your mom-"

"I know, okay?" she interjected hastily, swallowing around nothing but the guilt choking her. Of course she knew her mother was hurt by her disappearance. But knowing that and being emotionally capable of being in her presence were two very different things. "I'm sure I'll see her soon enough..."

She let the statement trail off, and turned toward the Ark, effectively ending the conversation by walking away from it. She headed toward where she knew medical to be, certain that she would see her mother very, very soon. And equally certain that they would not be talking about anything until after Lexa had been stabilized.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> {Day 99 - 100}
> 
> Comments, as always, welcome. If you feel like dropping by my tumblr and prodding me with inspiration/motivation, it's [@kumorik](http://kumorik.tumblr.com/). You can anon, you can message me directly, whatever. Don't worry about bothering me, I'll be ecstatic to have someone to talk to. Worst case scenario, I tease you with spoilers about what's to come.


	4. Waking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously: Lexa was injured on the Azgeda war-front. They journeyed to Arkadia, with Lexa developing signs of shock and falling unconscious along the way. The group had just arrived at Arkadia.
> 
> Lexa wakes, Clarke is a grumpy queen of avoidance, and Murphy gets to keep his hands.

**ABBY**

Abby was in the middle of operating on Raven when the news burst rudely through the plastic flaps that separated her operating area from the rest of medical, a breathless guard panting out, "New patient... arrow... kidney... shock..."

A second breathless messenger, arriving just after the first nodded in agreement while trying to catch their own breath.

Her brow furrowed in concern. To be interrupted in this fashion, it must be very important, but she couldn't just leave Raven open and half-finished. She was important, too.

Punctuating her thoughts came the snap of Jackson's gloves coming off, as he moved around the table toward the flaps to the rest of medical, almost as if reading her thoughts before she even got to them. "I'll go see what's going on."

She focused back on the task literally at hand, slowly working on the nerves at the base of Raven's spine, delicate and difficult work.

Jackson came back nearly twenty minutes later. Her eyes flicked to him, noting that he hadn't put on a new set of gloves. He wasn't planning to stay in her operating room. Whatever was going on  _was_ important. "It's the commander." To his credit, the sigh in his voice was hardly noticeable. "She's been shot with an arrow. It's still in her, but she's been bleeding internally. Clarke said signs of-"

Abby nearly did a double take.  _What did he just say? Clarke?_ Everything felt almost as if it were in slow motion as her hands stilled and she looked up from Raven, voice emotionless, "Wait... Clarke?" There was a tiny sliver of feeling trying to worm its way in, something that felt disturbingly like hope. But it couldn't be. It had been so long, and her daughter,  _her Clarke_ , was missing. Captured.

"Abby..." Jackson let out a hefty sigh, before admitting aloud, "Yes, Clarke is here. I'm sure you'll get the chance to catch up, but she's not the priority right now. Clarke said the commander started showing signs of going into shock nearly two days ago. I can do a scan, but Clarke and I are both pretty sure the arrow penetrated her kidney."

Hands twitching involuntarily, she pulled them away from Raven to avoid causing any more damage. She took a deep breath in as conflicting emotions flickered across her face. She wanted nothing more than to see Clarke, to pull her into a hug and never let go again. She'd also rather not risk the commander's condition worsening, she didn't sound like she was in good shape. And yet, she still had to finish with Raven. Jackson wasn't a skilled enough surgeon to take over the operation for her, but maybe he could help with Lexa.

Almost as if reading her mind again, Jackson said, "You finish with Raven. I'll try to stabilize the commander and prep her for surgery." And with that, she was alone with Raven again, trying to partition off her mind to focus on just one thing at a time.

* * *

**OCTAVIA**

Octavia passed through the Arkadian gates on the heels of the group she'd supposed to have been shadowing that evening. And while she had been nearby, she hadn't had to assist them in any way. A couple months in, most of their hunters were adequate; and no one seemed to have been attacked again. So anymore, her job mentoring the hunters was more of an excuse to take a long break from camp.

Despite that, it was still best to stick close, just in case. One attack from _Azgeda_ was too many. And thus, when her group returned to Arkadia for the night, so did she.

"Hey, you guys probably haven't heard that Clarke's back, yet." The voice came from one of the gate guards. She didn't recognize him, but he was talking to her companions, and not her. One of the various drawbacks to having been raised under the floor and cut off from society was not knowing who was who. "Yeah, she came with the commander." The guy answered some question she'd missed.

The statement, however, gave her pause. Clarke had been gone for  _months_. It was no secret that she had left right after their battle at the mountain; and no surprise that their chancellor had gone a little crazy in the time her daughter had been gone. They hadn't been the only ones; in fact, several people still bore scars from the battle, her brother among them.

For a moment, Octavia assumed the guard was joking, or spreading gossip. Clarke wouldn't have come back if it wasn't on her terms; if she wasn't ready. Unless Clarke had somehow managed to forget the events at Mount Weather entirely, she doubted that she'd gotten over it, that she had come back. And with the commander, of all people?

But then, something in the back of her mind reminded her of their last interaction. Clarke had known that the mountain men were launching a bomb toward _Tondisi_ , and she hadn't tried to evacuate the people there, yet she and Lexa had slipped out of the blast radius without so much as a warning to anyone else. Octavia had been enraged. To some extent, she still was; it just wasn't fresh or fiercely felt. She understood the choice a little better now, even if she still didn't approve. The mountain might not have been defeated, otherwise. Her brother might be dead.

Understanding didn't color her perception of Clarke in a better light. Her emotions were still tainted by a righteous rage.

As her thoughts circled back around to whether Clarke was even truly here, the question became meaningless, as Clarke stormed from the mouth of the Ark, a scowl visible from a hundred yards away in place on her face. Clarke turned in a half-circle, eyes scanning for something, and then she headed off along the length of the Ark.

Confusion and curiosity joined her muted rage as she watched Clarke slip around the Ark's edge. _There's nothing back there, where is she going?_

Octavia's curiosity won out, overpowering whatever resentment she felt. If worst came to worst, she could always just walk away from Clarke again. So she followed, a trot across the open area between her and the Ark before slowing and rounding the corner.

There sat a ladder. Maybe she should have remembered it was here, from when they had been deconstructing dangling portions of the Ark, but she hadn't been someone helping with the task.

With a glance around and a deep breath, she climbed the ladder, stepping out onto the flat compartment surface at the top. Clarke sat only a couple of feet away, back to her, gazing out at the expanse of the camp.

Octavia hesitated. Was it worth trying to talk to her? But, again, she could always walk away. So she stepped up beside Clarke and dropped down next to her on the compartment roof.

The silence between them stretched from seconds into minutes, and longer still. She looked out at the camp, herself. Movement along one edge of the fence caught her attention. Squinting helped to identify...  _Murphy? What the hell is he doing here?_ The boy was attempting to look casual while walking the perimeter, but the occasional glance around coupled with focus on visibly-weaker spots in the fence made it obvious that he was looking for ways to leave. The corner of her mouth twitched into a smile at the sight of a shaggy-haired grounder obviously keeping an eye on Murphy from a distance.

Whatever was going on here - Murphy and Clarke both being here despite not wanting to be, the commander being here, all of them together - there was sure to be an interesting story behind it all.

Finally, Octavia turned her head to actually look at Clarke, eyes taking note of the fact that she was taking in the same sight of Murphy and his grounder pal that Octavia had just been watching.

"How have you been?"

"Fine."

She didn't believe that for a moment, her eyes noting the way Clarke tensed at the question, and the way the word sound clipped, rushed, like it was the only answer Clarke  _could_ give, despite the fact that it wasn't an answer. She rolled her eyes minutely before trying another question, "Did being away so long help?"

Octavia couldn't help but think of and compare to Bellamy. They had both been in that room, both pulled that lever. One stayed, and one went. Would a break from Arkadia have helped Bellamy get over the mountain any sooner? But he seemed like he was in a better state than Clarke, even now. Maybe it wasn't the mountain anymore. Maybe she'd gotten used to being on her own. Maybe when she wasn't here - Arkaida - maybe she was okay.

"Yeah..." There was a long pause after the single word while Octavia waited for detail to be volunteered. She wasn't going to demand it. She'd sooner walk away and leave Clarke to stew in her own mind. "...I just wasn't ready to come back, yet." What was visible of Clarke's eyes left Murphy and drifted up to where the treeline met the night sky. "I didn't have much choice."

She frowned, "I'm sure you had a choice. You're always the one who has a choice."

Clarke's head rotated minutely away from hers, hiding her eyes with the profile of her face, "Might seem that way..." Clarke let out a heavy sigh. "It's a long story."

"I've got the patience of someone who spent sixteen years under a floor. I can wait."

Turning back to look at her, Clarke's expression wasn't telling, but there was just a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. "I made a friend while I was gone. I went to war to try to find him." Maybe it really wasn't the mountain that was Clarke's problem, anymore. New friends, new wars, new problems. Same old Clarke. "The commander got hurt, and she's the one who's help I need to find him. I need her alive, and I'm not good enough to perform surgery on her. My mom was the only option."

"Bullshit."

Whatever amusement there was had vanished, and Clarke tensed, once again silent.

"You always seem to need people, and it always seems to get them hurt. You've done surgery before. Jasper. Finn. You had a choice."

She might not have liked the  _options_ , but she still had a  _choice_. Just like _Tondisi_ and Mount Weather. Not a lot of great options, but choices still made. Octavia gave a little internal sigh. Perhaps it was time to leave those events in the past.

Octavia continued, since Clarke didn't seem to be willing to respond to that, "Okay. Let's say for a second that you didn't have a choice about the commander having to get healed in Arkadia. You didn't have to come in."

Clarke abruptly sat up a bit straighter, an almost dazed expression crossing her face, "You're right." And then Clarke was standing, moving, and descending the ladder without another word to her.

Octavia stayed sitting where she was, watching as Clarke came into view around the Ark and, surprisingly, walked straight toward its entrance. Moments earlier, she would have bet her rations that Clarke would be heading for the gate.

She rolled her eyes once more before dropping off the edge toward the ground.  _That conversation really wasn't worth it._

\- - -

**ABBY**

Abby let out a hefty sigh at the placidity of the medical ward, the snap of her gloves biting into the quiet as she removed them before depositing them into the appropriate receptacle. The silence broke again as she activated the nearby sink and began to scrub her hands.

She wasn't quite sure what time it was. Surely, sometime in the early hours of morning; but with no exterior light shining into medical, she didn't feel certain of that estimate. She cast a glance over her shoulder at the two occupied beds in the room, hands still within the stream of water that wouldn't quite get hot enough. Raven was in the nearer bed, Lexa in the next one down, both unconscious. The comatose state wasn't a cause of concern, itself. They'd both been heavily medicated. But, as a doctor, she did have her individual concerns about each of them.

After all this time, the effort, the planning, the restrictions, and barely getting the CT out of the mountain; what if after all that, she still failed in healing Raven?

And as for Lexa... she was the Commander. She was one of their only real allies (she hoped) among the clans. If anything happened to her, it could jeopardize their peace, their safety, their lives. It wasn't just an idle worry, either. Wounds took time to heal; time she suspected the Commander wouldn't want to wait. Logically, it was only a matter of time before Lexa was placing herself in danger again, and there was no telling where she might be, by then, whether she could be healed again if something else happened.

However, valid as the concerns for her patients were, they paled in comparison to everything going though her mind in regards to Clarke. She hadn't even seen her daughter, yet. A brief word from Jackson was all the knowledge she had amidst a myriad of medical distraction. Clarke was here - or had been - somewhere. The question was where, and where she _had_ been, what had happened, and why was she here now? And also if she would talk to her.

Abby flicked off the stream of water and dried her hands before dimming the lights to medical. Her eyes caught on the empty chair beside Lexa's bed in what little light entered medical from the hallway. She wondered, maybe, if Clarke had stayed with Lexa at all while she'd been preoccupied with Raven. She wondered again why Clarke had come there with Lexa, and if she cared what happened to the Commander. She certainly hadn't stayed for surgery; causing Abby to wonder where Clarke had gone off to instead. She wasn't really sure where Clarke was, but she was determined - a fearful sort of determination, that was afraid of rejection, or even being told she was the reason for Clarke's absence, but determination nonetheless. She would find Clarke tonight. Abby was relatively certain she wouldn't be able to sleep without doing so, anyways.

It didn't take long. Abby exited medical and barely turned into the hall; Clarke was right there before her, leaning against the metal wall. Her heart swelled with a combination of hope - because Clarke was right  _here_ , right before her eyes! - and fear, once she took in Clarke's appearance and posture. It was obvious Clarke had been standing in that same spot for quite some time, but at the movement out of the corner of her eye, she was instantly alert. Familiar blue eyes locked onto Abby's, but they were averted far too quickly, and there was a shadow of something haunting behind them. There was an almost imperceptible twitch in her daughter's hands, something that spoke to the desire to do something, or go somewhere, that she was forcing herself to ignore. And the set of Clarke's shoulders was slumped, resigned, despite everything else about the way she was carrying herself being incredibly stiff. She seemed so very distant, for all that she was right before her. It hardly took Abby a full second to make assumptions about Clarke's state of mind. _1) She doesn't want to be here. 2) She wants to leave. 3) She doesn't want to talk._ The aversion of the eyes was clear indication. _I don't know a fraction of what I want to about what happened out there._

Clarke said nothing as she stepped forward. Abby almost had her arms raised, to let her daughter fall into them, to hold her again, to provide them both some comfort, when instead Clarke rounded her and her head disappeared beyond the doorway to medical. The slight was visceral, like ice sliding into her heart.

"Clarke?" Her own voice cracked over the simple name, somehow sounding both desolate and hopeful. And she didn't mean for it to sound like a question, but she couldn't deny that it was one. Some cautious part of her refused to believe that Clarke was really here.

Clarke turned around, leaning against the wall once more, albeit closer to the doorway than before. Tentatively, her eyes came up to meet Abby's again. The girl swallowed visibly, searching for her voice, and when it came, it was so small and quiet that if it hadn't been silent throughout that wing of the Ark, she might have missed it, "Hi, mom."

Abby couldn't help herself, reaching out toward Clarke again. Her hand found itself on Clarke's shoulder, gently pulling the girl into her embrace. She squeezed Clarke tightly to her, but beneath the hold, she could feel Clarke tensing in response. Clarke might not have hugged her back, but the reaction cemented a vice-like grip on her heart, which struggled to beat through the agony. With only a minor hesitation, she forced herself to release Clarke from the embrace, taking a step back away from her.

Her own voice quiet, she let out the only thing on her mind that wasn't an overwhelming series of questions, "I missed you." It had been on repeat in her head for months, between all her other worries. It was the only thing that never wavered or changed in that time.

Clarke's eyes were refusing to meet hers, again, and it made her stomach clench with a new surge of fear.  _Did she not miss me? Is she not back for good? She doesn't... doesn't want to be here. Will she ever?_

Then, still without looking at her, Clarke acknowledged her admission, "I know."

Swallowing, she nodded slightly to herself. She was fairly certain that Clarke couldn't see what she was doing, anyways, eyes focused on some blank space in the hall.  _It's okay. No matter what, it's okay. Clarke is safe, and **here**. Maybe she doesn't want to be, and maybe she won't stay. But right now - right now, it's enough._ The situation was so much more complicated than just her and Clarke having been apart for a while. There were other matters - other emotions - to consider. Even if Clarke didn't want to be here, that didn't really make it her fault.

So Abby did the only thing she could. She accepted the situation as it was, and told Clarke, "It's okay." Because it was okay not to want to be here, and it was okay to feel whatever it was that she was feeling. It was okay that she left, and it would be okay if she left again, even if it was the last thing Abby wanted.

She looked down to see her own fingertips twitching involuntarily. They wanted to pull Clarke back into her embrace. But she could wait. She could wait until Clarke was okay with it again.

The silence of the hallway lingered, pervasive, reminding her that it was late. Talking could wait until tomorrow - er... later today.  _Clarke will still be here_ , she told herself, even if she didn't feel certain about it. But, for whatever reason, Clarke seemed invested in the Commander's state. And that would buy her a day, at the least. Even if Clarke was only sticking around long enough to see that she was alright.

Clarke pushed away from the wall and started down the hallway, pulling her out of her thoughts, an involuntary spark of panic flaring to life in their stead. She started after Clarke, rushing until she was walking beside her daughter.

"It's late," she turned her head toward Clarke, trying to spot any kind of reaction. "We should both get some sleep. You can use the bed in my room, Clarke."

"I can use my own bed." There wasn't a flicker of anything to betray Clarke's thoughts to her.

"You could..." A tiny niggling of guilt joint the spark of fear within her, "If you still had one."

Clarke didn't even pause. Not in her stride, and not in her response. "Gave my room away? Are you sure you missed me?" Her tone was droll, and it was impossible to tell if that was sass, or if Clarke was actually questioning whether she missed her.

Her sense of guilt grew stronger, "Of course I am. Ask anyone." Her own tone light and imploring. She didn't want to get into a fight with Clarke, but neither did she want her daughter to think she didn't care.

It didn't seem to help, however, Clarke responding evenly, "I'll find my own place to sleep."

They had reached the junction at the entrance to the Ark, with just a short hallway between them and the exterior. Clarke made an abrupt exit.

Abby followed after her, slower, stopping in the doorway and watching in the darkness as Clarke walked right down to the gate and slipped through the narrow gap offered to her.

She ran a hand through her hair. What was she going to do? What  _could_ she do? Clarke obviously wasn't ready to be back. For all her own hopes and thoughts and ideas about what would happen when she saw Clarke again, she'd never considered that it would happen before Clarke was  _ready_. It left Abby feeling incredibly full of emotions, remarkably devoid of ideas, and desperate for some way to help.

\- - -

**LEXA**

_**There was a head in a box before her. Like she was seeing it for the first time, and not just remembering it. It sliced through to her heart the same way it had the first time.** _

_**She knew what would be in the box before she slid back the wooden top. She'd always known. But her brain could never accept until she saw it with her own eyes.** _

_**Those eyes traced the features of her former lover in shock. Her skin was paler in death than she had been in life, and paler still where she'd been stripped of once-beautiful hair. Hair that Lexa would forever miss. Costia's eyes were closed, their once-vibrant joy forever gone. Never coming back.** _

**_Even through her shock, she could hear her two most trusted advisers arguing just outside the room._ **

**_"This is why my teachings are important, Anya! You should never have let her spend time with the girl! Love is weakness!"_ **

**_Right now, it most certainly was. That thought rang clearly through the shock that still held Lexa captive. Titus had always said so, taught her so, but now - now she knew. She should never have had to find out for herself. She was weak. Her hands came up to wipe the silent river of tears from her face. She couldn't let anyone see her like this; weak._ **

**_"No one knew this would happen, Titus! She deserves the same chance to love that any of the rest of us do!"_ **

**_"No one knew?! Do you even hear yourself? I knew. I told you! I told the both of you, but you wouldn't listen."_ **

**_Titus had known. The very first time he had seen the two of them together, he had pulled her aside and told her to guard her heart more carefully. Told her for the hundredth time that love was weakness. She hadn't believed him. She hadn't wanted to; she was already in love and couldn't see past the euphoria of being with her lover in the moment._ **

**_He'd known better all along. He'd known what would happen when it was gone._ **

**_He'd warned her._ **

**_Anya had encouraged her._ **

**_And now, she was both weak and hurt. Like her heart lay in the box before her instead of a face._ **

**_"You put everything at risk!" Titus yelled at her fos. "Everything she wants to accomplish, everything she fights for, everything we raised her to be! You put the_ commander _at risk!"_**

**_Again, he was right._ **

**_Lexa pulled back from her shock, began to slowly close herself off, shutting her emotions out, pulling what she couldn't excise beneath the surface._ **

**_Her brain worked in a frenzy. She couldn't let this happen again._ **

**_"Titus, this is no one's fault but Nia's. We need to be here for her and support her, not assign blame for having emotions."_ **

**_If she couldn't rid herself of them, she'd have to hide them well. She stood, turned, eyes catching on Anya's irate form. Her fos was the only person left she felt anything significant for._ **

**_She'd never known her parents, or any other family, taken from them to Polis just as soon as it was known that she was a natblida. Too young for even vague, imperfect memories to have made an imprint on her mind. Being raised a natblida hadn't afforded her many opportunities for friendship, either. It wasn't long enough ago that_** **_Lexa had had to kill nearly everyone who'd been a friend to her during her conclave. The one that survived was nowhere near, certainly not close enough to be a threat to her heart._ **

**_Eyes still fixed on Anya, she tried to swallow down everything she felt. Anya wasn't_ just  _her fos. She was friend, family, and mentor all in one. And that was too much. Lexa refused to let her eyes return to the box that lay somewhere behind her, but that didn't stop her mind from going there. She couldn't let that fate find anyone else she cared for. And Anya was all that was left._**

**_It took a few long moments of thought for Lexa to conclude that, even wanting to, she couldn't stop herself from caring about Anya. And that left only one option; push her away. Send her anywhere else. The farther, the better, because if anything, being near Lexa was a danger in itself._ **

**_Though it felt like she'd been lost in her thoughts for hours, when she finally strode forward, toward the doorway, the argument between her advisers had hardly progressed. She interrupted her former mentor's retort, "No, Anya. Titus is right. Love is weakness." There was some indiscernible pain in her heart at the sound of her own emotionless voice. "You should have known, as my fos; not let me indulge my feelings."_ **

**_"Lexa, not all feelings are-"_ **

**_She leveled a glare at the elder woman, "No. Love is weakness." She settled her jaw, steeling herself to let go of the only person she was sure still cared for her. All to protect herself from every feeling like this again. And to protect Anya from suffering the same fate as Costia."You are wrong. Leave. Pick a post anywhere. Don't come back."_ **

**_The hurt expression on Anya's face caused the pain in her chest to worsen, and she ended up turning her back on her mentor as Titus not-so-silently gloated._ **

**_It was what had to be done. For both of them, she had to let - or_ make _\- Anya leave._**

**_Even so, the pain in her chest grew, and spread. She glanced down at her own torso, confused at the concentration of pain outside the region of her heart._ **

Lexa woke with a start and a groan, trying to sit up and merely worsening the pain in her abdomen in the process. Her eyes turned down toward her torso, finding bandages wrapped about herself, dark blood spotting through over the site of a wound.

A figure appeared at her bedside - just as Lexa realized she was  _on_ a bed - and her eyes slowly focused to identify Chancellor Griffin. When had she gotten to Arkadia?

Without warning, a bright light was in her eyes, and Abby was scrutinizing her closely. "Do you know where you are, Lexa?" Her eyes watered involuntarily at the luminous assault, even as she tried to turn them away. A strong hand on her jaw prevented that, and without pausing to let Lexa respond, the doctor continued, "What's the last thing you remember? How does it feel? It looks like you tore a stitch. I'll change the bandages in a moment, but try not to move." The light finally clicked off, and Lexa felt herself relax minutely. "I'll be right back, I'm just going to grab some gauze and bandages." She hardly had the opportunity to note Abby turning away and walking to the other end of the room.

What  _was_ the last thing she remembered?

_Clarke._

Well, she couldn't just say 'All I remember is Clarke.'

Clarke's fingers on her, gently tending to her wounds, but voice rough and emotionless, assuring her that this was all that could be done.

She couldn't quite shake the memory of those fingers on her skin, but all the same, her heart sunk.

She turned her head to the side, and, of course, what came into view was none other than Clarke herself, sitting on a chair, arms folded, one leg crossed over the other, expression something of a fusion between glare and curious observation.

And here she was, proving again that love - that any emotion, really - was weakness. She'd gotten hurt because she cared for Clarke.

A tiny wrinkle of concern appeared between Clarke's brow. Or that was what it appeared, but perhaps Clarke was just uncomfortable. After all, she didn't even return the feelings that had gotten Lexa into this situation in the first place.

Lexa turned her gaze back toward the ceiling. This wasn't going to end well. Try as she might, she knew there was no turning off her feelings. She hadn't been able to with Anya, and even with the distance and years apart before her death, it still stung fiercely.

She closed her eyes tightly. Clarke would be the death of her. All she could do was follow Titus's last exasperated bit of advice; hide her feelings. And she wasn't entirely sure she could do that with Clarke so close.

"Lexa? Are you okay? How bad does it hurt? I can get you something for the pain before I fix the stitches, if you need." Abby was back at the bedside.

She repressed the desire to sigh, and opened her eyes again, responding with "I'm fine."

"Bullshit," a voice came from the side of the bed opposite Clarke, past Abby. She turned her head further, to find Raven grinning at her, "Do the drugs, commander! They're the best."

She let her head fall back against the pillow beneath her, eyes resettling on the ceiling, "Fine."

Abby left momentarily, retrieving a syringe from a cabinet on the far wall. When she returned, the contents were injected into a tube. Which, once Lexa startled at the feeling of cold entering her veins through her arm, she discovered led to her.

"So, Lexa, maybe I spoke a bit too fast earlier. Do you know where you are?" Abby rounded the bed and began to peel the bandages from her abdomen, fingers cool, but not unpleasant, against her skin.

"Arkadia."

"And what's the last thing you remember?"

"Clarke helped me back into the cart, redid my bandages, said she'd done all she could and that we had to come here."

Abby looked past her, toward Clarke, who spoke for the first time, tone seemingly devoid of emotion, "She was pretty out of it. I don't know how high her fever got."

Abby merely nodded, "Okay, Lexa. That was about three days ago." Her fingers taped a fresh bandage over the wound in her abdomen. "We got the arrow out fine, but Clarke was right about it hitting your kidney. You've also got a broken rib on the right, just below your shoulder blade, but the wound there seems to be healing fine." There was a pause as Abby regarded her, "You might not like to hear this, but with the kidney wound, I have to recommend that you don't do anything strenuous for about six months. Like fight."

Lexa narrowed her eyes at the doctor.

"I know there's a war, and I know that you're in charge, and I  _know_ you're not going to listen to me, but as a doctor, I have to tell you. And I'm going to keep you here as long as I can so that you have a chance to heal," the doctor warned sternly.

"Hey, Lexa!" Raven attempted to grab her attention. Reluctantly, she gave it. "I'm stuck here, too. You're in good company! And good timing, if I don't say so myself."

An involuntary smile tugged at the corner of her lips. She could stay for a little while, she supposed. She probably wouldn't be much good fighting like this, anyways.

Abby seemed to take the minute change in expression as acceptance. She wasn't wrong.

"Hey, Abby?" A new voice. One she recognized as Kane. "Sorry, we have a... some things."

Abby frowned, glancing toward Clarke, but she followed Kane out the door shortly.

Lexa breathed a bit more freely without the barrage of questions, and the painkiller taking effect. "Raven?" she asked, eyes still on the ceiling.

"Yeah, buddy? I bet you feel worse than  _I_ do, right now."

"The drugs  _are_ good," she conceded, before asking, "Does this count as visiting?"

Raven laughed, full and loud, before eventually settling and answering, "Yeah, I think we both get accidental friend points for this." There was a pause and then, "Come on."

Lexa looked over at her friend, curiously, to see her nearest arm outstretched in a fist. She had no idea what Raven wanted.

After staring at the fist for a moment, Raven explained, "You tap your fist against mine. It's a friend thing."

She felt one brow shift upward. She didn't really understand the point. Nevertheless, a moment later, she was shifting toward the edge of her own bed and holding out her own fist, a grimace in place at the pain the movement created in her right arm. Or, more accurately, in the musculature around her broken rib that supported the position she held her arm in. Finally, Raven took pity on her, and leaned over further to bridge the gap, and their knuckles met briefly. "Okay, you weren't supposed to hurt yourself."

Clarke moved into view near the end of the bed as Lexa pulled her arm back into the bed with the rest of her, sparing the pair of them a glare as she moved toward the door. She nearly bumped into Abby as the woman re-entered.

"Clarke," the woman's hands came up between them to prevent a collision. "We could talk if you want? Now that things have been settled?"

Clarke only grunted and moved around her own mother.

"Clarke, don't do this," Abby pleaded. "Don't run away from me." The pain was evident in the woman's voice.

"Do I look like I'm running?" The last words came as Clarke was passing through the doorway.

Abby stood for a moment, entirely still, before a full-bodied sigh escaped her, and she slumped into the nearest chair.

"Geez, Clarke is  _not_ in a good mood," Raven said.

Lexa found herself frowning yet again, "Did anything happen besides me?"

Raven sat herself up further, rearranging several pillows in the process, "I don't know. I only barely got her to give me the basics about what happened to you. And nothing I wouldn't have figured out from listening to you and Abby, anyways."

Abby hefted out another sigh and pulled herself back to her feet before approaching Raven's bed. "She doesn't want to be here," she said, then with no segue, demanded, "Leg." Raven rolled her eyes, but pulled back the sheets to expose her left leg. Abby ran a finger tip slowly up the side of the girl's leg. "Feel anything?" Her voice was disturbing devoid of emotion. Normally, that wouldn't bother Lexa, but the  _Skaikru_ were usually so full of every and any emotion. She was starting to realize that its absence meant something was wrong.

"No," Raven looked at her leg, then up at Abby. "Should that concern me?"

"No. You're literally regrowing nerves. Was never going to happen overnight." She glanced toward the open door. "I'm just being... hopeful. And distracting myself."

"Go find her, Abby. Maybe if you take her out for a walk in the woods, she'll relax." Abby turned to leave, seemingly without any objections to Raven's suggestion. "Oh! And send me visitors!" Raven called after the retreating doctor.

Raven waited a moment after Abby left, and then leaned over toward Lexa, "So how did you guys really end up together? Clarke wouldn't say."

Lexa sighed, eyes drifting up to the ceiling again, "I was fighting a war. She walked into the fight and nearly got herself shot."

"And, of course, you took an arrow for her," she could practically hear Raven's eye roll. "Is that it? So... she doesn't know?"

"Unless stepping in front of an arrow for her made things any more obvious, no more so than she knew before."

\- - -

**ABBY**

Abby slid onto a bench at a table in the commons, across from Kane. It was lunchtime, but hunger was the farthest thing from her mind.

"Has anyone been able to find Clarke? Or talk to her?"

After leaving medical a few hours earlier, she'd sought him out, and they decided to split up to search for Clarke and ask if anyone had actually gotten a word out of her.

Kane slowly lowered his fork to the tray before him, obviously taking a moment to decide how he wanted to frame the conversation. It almost aggravated Abby, and it was only the fact that it was so brief that prevented her from complaining. "No," and then he paused again, obviously considering the truth of that answer. "Octavia is the only person who claims to have exchanged more than a few words with her, and she said that was last night."

"Well, what did she get out of Clarke? Anything?" Abby was desperate.

"Nothing you don't already know, Abby. She wasn't ready to come back."

"Can we send people out to find her? Can I just walk out there and find her?" She was on the verge of tears. "I understand if she doesn't want to be here, but she won't even talk to me!"

Marcus moved his hand across the table to gentle cover hers. "Abby... it's probably more than just a place."

"And that's what hurts, Marcus!" Her tear filled eyes met with his, a pained expression in place. "She can't even look at me..."

"She still needs time."

"I know! I know, okay." She pulled her hand away from his, into her lap, looking down at it. "But she's had so much time already, and it hasn't seemed to help."

"That's not a fair assessment. We don't know how bad it was for her when she left. She was gone before we even had the chance to find out."

"If this is the better... Marcus, all I want is to be able to help her. I just don't know how." The floodgates finally cracked, and silent tears escaped her eyes to run over her cheekbones and down to her chin.

"For now, give her a couple days. From the sound of it, she hasn't been around more than one person at a time for months. This might be overwhelming, and maybe she'll get used to being around us all again with a bit of space."

Abby couldn't help the bitter scoff, "She can't get used to it if she's never here."

"Like I said, give it a few days. Not forever." His voice was as calm as ever. "One of the grounders that came with them, the one who keeps following John Murphy around, he was able to find her out there. You know we won't be able to. She was so close, for so long, and we never even knew. If it comes to it, we can ask him to find her."

"Or to bring me to her." Maybe Clarke would like it better - would seem better - if it was just them, if there weren't hundreds of other people around. "She doesn't want to be here, but I'm not afraid to go out there."

\- - -

**LEXA**

Later in the day, word must have spread that she was awake. At least to her own people.

Roan's head poked into the infirmary before the rest of him, and with little lead up, he asked, "So, now that Clarke's back with her people, will you lift my banishment?"

She leveled a glare at him, pushing herself up despite the pain, "Clarke being back in Arkadia is not your doing! In fact, had you actually done what was asked of you,  _I_ wouldn't be here, away from my war against your mother! And you have the gall to ask for your reward?!"

"That's a no," he grumbled, eyes shifting away from her, arms crossed.

"Leave," she ordered.

He stalked from the room, but the quiet didn't last long. A pair of her warriors she vaguely recognized entered shortly after, a  _Skaikru_ boy held between them.

"Murphy?" Raven asked from the bed beside hers. "What the  _fuck_ are you doing back here?"

"What  _is_ he doing here?" Lexa questioned, hoping that whatever the answer, it wouldn't be cause for her people to demand action against anyone but the boy himself. Raven's tone in greeting him was cause enough to believe that even the  _Skaikru_ didn't like this boy.

The boy, Murphy, lifted his head to give Raven a tired, baleful glare, lips twisted into a smirk despite obvious exhaustion, "Didn't really have a choice. Princess always gets what she wants."

His head abruptly jerked forward in response to being hit from behind, as one of her guards admonished, "Quiet, thief!"

The rolling of Raven's eyes was rather exaggerated as she slumped back into a pile of pillows, "Of course you stole something."

"What did he steal?" Lexa tried to cut straight to the point.

However, instead of an immediate and informative response, the pair glanced between each other before one spoke, "We don't actually know."

"But there have been multiple thefts on the road, and he lay in wait, trying to ambush us for our belongings."

"It was the first time! It didn't even work! You caught me before I could steal anything!" Murphy, despite being held, managed to flail his hands in gestures with every defensive statement.

"Bullshit, Murphy," Raven mumbled, not even bothering to look at the boy.

Lips pursed, Lexa mused on how to handle the situation. Proof was not something her people needed to enact punishment. But she also didn't want to risk endangering their relationship with the  _Skaikru_. And yet, the boy seemed to have a reputation as a thief - or at least trouble of some kind - already. "Where are his things? Is there anything among them that is obviously not his own?"

One of the guards slipped their fingers into a pouch, searching for something as they said, "I suspect there's a stash in the woods somewhere. He was dressed like a man beaten and robbed to try to fool us. But he did -" the object came free of the pouch and was presented to Lexa. A tiny little hexagon, clear yet opaque, a perfect blue infinity etched in the face. "-have this on him."

Lexa remembered her own ascension well enough. She had received the spirit of the commander, which bore striking similarity to the small chip now in hand. Larger, in every dimension, and somewhat oblong, but still very similar. What the connection between the two was, Lexa had no idea, but she assumed there was one.

"Wait, what is that?" Raven asked, suddenly upright and interested again.

She traced her thumb in a sideways figure eight along the etching as she said, "It is our sacred symbol." With some hesitation, she held it out toward Raven, who took it, curiosity flaring to life in her eyes as she examined the object. "Where did you find it?" she asked, returning her attention to Murphy.

"Why should I tell you?" Murphy struggled against her guards' hold, more for show than an effort at escaping. Or so she hoped, for his sake, since it was a pitiful attempt. "If you're just going to cut off my hands, or my head or something?"

"Murphy, you shit," Raven said without lifting her gaze from the chip. "Answer the question."

"I'm serious! I'm not answering shit if they can't promise to leave me alone."

Lexa considered for another moment, before questioning her guards, "You have no  _proof_ he stole anything?" There was a rather resigned shake of heads. "Fine. Murphy, tell me where you found it, everything you know about it, and I will ensure that you retain your limbs and life."

The boy smirked victoriously at Raven, just shy of actual gloating, "See? Was that so hard?" Then, turning to Lexa, said, "When Jaha and I left here when you were on the warpath against us," his hands flailed, attempting some kind of emphasis. "-we crossed the dead zone looking for some 'City of Light'. Then crossed some monster-infested waters, killed just about everyone, and ended up on an island. One mansion, one bunker."

"Mansion?"

"Big house," Raven supplied.

Murphy's eyes rolled, but he went on, "Right. Anyways, I got locked in the bunker for a couple months while Jaha went all crazy religious nut." There was an abrupt silence as Murphy paused, seeming to think something over before continuing, "So when I finally get out, Jaha's lost his marbles, and he gives me that chip when we leave the island. Says it takes away pain, rage, whatever. Not interested, I like being me. Aside from Jaha himself, I only saw two people who I think took one of these chips. One guy, big dude, didn't feel a thing when I smashed his face. I mean, it was ugly already, but still. Other guy, I saw him before. Timid, kept to himself, hid his deformities-" Lexa restrained a sigh. The inhabitants of the dead zone were mostly the clanless; the banished, or those cast out by their own clan. People with deformities were not a rarity in the dead zone. "-only saw him briefly after, but he seemed completely fine with showing his face, and was suddenly all 'Join the city of light', and understanding tech the grounders never use." The pause was much more significant as everyone waited to see if there was anything more. There wasn't. "That's it. That's basically everything I know."

Lexa glanced at Raven, an eyebrow tipping up in silent question as she held her hand out for the chip Raven returned to her.

"Oh, he's hiding something. It's Murphy. He's always hiding something, but that doesn't mean what he said isn't true."

Murphy stood smirking between the two guards as she appraised him, finally relenting, "Fine." She addressed her warriors, eyes still fixed on the boy between them, "Do not punish Murphy for his thefts. But you-" Lexa pointed for emphasis, "-shall not steal from my people again with the same immunity. Next time, I take both hands. And that's if I'm feeling generous." The hand that had pointed dropped away, while the other silently fingered the hexagonal disk. "You may go, but you stay in Arkadia for now. You will answer any additional questions I have about this."

She waited, patiently, for the boy to leave, her guards slowly releasing their hold, but for whatever reason, he remained. Finally, Lexa looked up from where her gaze had returned to the chip, and said plainly, "Go."

Lexa sighed heavily as Murphy exited, and addressed her soldiers, "One of you find me Roan." She stared again at the chip held gently between two of her fingers, "I have a task even he can't screw up."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> {Day 100 - 101}


End file.
